The Concept of Burial Modes as a Research Tool in the Late Prehistory of the Southern Levant

As the Neolithic Revolution made its entrance on the stage of the southern Levant, it brought with it major changes in human society. As man progressed from primitive modes of production in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, Pottery Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic periods, into the Early Bronze Age, as he moved on to agriculture and the domestication of animals, as he developed socially and his knowledge of metals and trade and economy grew, so, too, he changed his ways of burying his dead. Throughout these periods, the spiritual world and burial customs of early man developed from in-house burials in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period to cemeteries in the Ghassulian Chalcolithic and to socially separated cemeteries in the Early Bronze Age. In this paper, we will attempt to define the burial customs of late prehistory in the southern Levant and its relationship to economy and society. In this sense, we will present the concept of burial modes as a research tool for archaeology as a scientific discipline.